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Wednesday, 16 June 2010

A couple of nights ago the ABC's Foreign Correspondent program covered the legal use of cannabis for medical purposes in California and how, given the huge financial hole the state is in, this could be expanded to provide a useful cash crop if the state grasped the nettle (or weed, as it were) and simply repealed the prohibition on adults smoking it. A few years ago I saw an episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! that also dealt with drug prohibition, which if I recall claimed that there were only a handful of people in the whole US who were allowed to smoke cannabis for medical reasons. Judging by Tuesday night's Foreign Correspondent things have moved on a bit since then. The program, appropriately titled 'High Finance', is worth a look and is on the ABC's iViewer here, though I have no idea if that thing will work for anyone outside Australia or if, like Auntie Beeb's iPlayer, will show you the electronic door. If it doesn't work or you don't want to watch a half hour TV program the next best thing is the transcript, which is available here.

The bankrupt state of California, USA, which has their governor begging China now to bail them out of their fiscal catastrophe, literally bragged in the Sacramento Bee newspaper published in the state capital about how wonderful the news is that the state lost close to $1-Billion dollars last year in tobacco tax and tobacco related sales tax revenues, all thanks to the "success" of their rampant anti-smoking crusades, indoors and especially hard-felt, outdoors as well.

They basically killed off one cash cow on their crusade to "save lives", yet the state's budget for "healthcare" costs has only increased over the decades since beginning their "war on smokers".

So now they must ramp up to legalize marijuana, because it will be taxable and make up for the losses they self-incurred because of their intense fanatical obsessions with anti-smoking.

Frankly, it should be made legal and taxed. It will rid the California countryside of hidden bear traps and killer guard dogs roaming the woods where currently illegal marijuana farms exist, for one thing and provide some revenue increase for all the destruction their "health" departments have reaped through their "war on smokers" campaigns which have been so "successful".

In fact, California should make it a point to just get off everyone's case, allow anyone to buy and smoke whatever they choose and stop being such a nannying bully state in the first place - and if they replace dogmatic bans and restrictions with freedom of choice - for tobacco and marijuana both - then maybe they can find their way out of the fiscal mess their policies of unstoppable tax and spending coupled with nanny-state dictates has got them to in the first place.

Either that or the whole damn state collapses and gets China to pick up the tab, along with ceding the political control over to China at the same time.

The way California leadership has been obsessed with anti-smoking paranoia and repression in the first place shows they would probably quickly assimilate to any communist imposed dictates should a bail-out by China be eventually required.

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